Textiles of Southeast Asia. Robyn Maxwell
textiles with similar iconography, are used as hangings, room-dividers, shrouds, and ceremonial seats. Another term for the palepai, the large supplementary weft hangings of Lampung in southern Sumatra, is 'the big wall', sesai balak (Gittinger, 1972: 5). It is probable that, while textiles were eventually used for such purposes, mats had often been used instead in earlier times.
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59,60
The related technique of twining or interlacing with rattan or other vegetable fibres also provides a sturdy garment and a base material for painting or adding shells, beads and other appliqué. Jackets thus made are found throughout insular Southeast Asia. In particular, twined flaps and jackets, sporting split or carved shell discs and other decorative materials as protective scales or armour, were used into the twentieth century by the Toraja of Sulawesi, the Ifugao of Luzon and many peoples of Irian Jaya and Borneo. Often these, like many of the bark and beaded coats, were worn during expeditions and ceremonial activities connected with head-hunting. An affinity also exists between plaiting and the twining technique used in textile decoration in many parts of Indonesia and Sarawak where two wefts are alternatively wrapped over and under the warp threads (Gittinger, 1979: 226). The absence of shed-openers or heddles that serve to open the appropriate warp threads to allow the weft to be interlaced suggests that both these techniques may have been the forerunners of weaving.
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62,63
64
It is fairly certain that loom-woven fibre fabrics have had a very long history in the Southeast Asian region,20 although concrete evidence of particular types of looms and cloth is scarce. Fibres and wooden tools in Metal Age tombs have not survived and instances of the use of the foot-braced loom, depicted on some Bronze Age metal sculptures found in certain locations, are rare.21 Nevertheless, other very simple tension looms are found throughout Southeast Asia and into the Pacific region, and the oldest and most widespread of these weaving devices for utilizing local vegetable fibres is the simple back-strap tension loom which uses a continuous circulating warp. The type of looms used in Southeast Asia were also found in neighbouring Micronesia into the twentieth century (Ling Roth, 1918: 64-112), and many of the designs and some of the raw materials that are also used in Southeast Asia enjoy a much wider use in the Pacific are suggesting ancient Austronesian origins.
(detail) selesil; palepai maju (?) ceremonial hanging Paminggir people, Lampung, Sumatra, Indonesia vegetable fibre, handspun cotton, beads, natural dyes interlacing, appliqué, beading 360.0 x 50.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.618
Although some seventy per cent of this object is in its original state, severely damaged sections of the cloth were rearranged in the process of repair before it came into the Australian National Gallery collection. As a result, some of the mythical creatures appear in a slightly different sequence to the original design. A figure originally on the far left of the cloth has been moved to the opposite end where it is now the final motif. Anthropomorphic figures are mounted on the animals, which bear a striking resemblance to those creatures found on other textiles of different decorative techniques also made in this region of Sumatra. Unfortunately, little reliable ethnographic information is available for these objects, although they clearly date from the nineteenth century or earlier. Mattiebelle Gittinger (personal communication, 1984) has suggested that the term selesil was used for certain beaded cloths in Lampung although we are uncertain whether this term was ever applied to these particular large beaded hangings.
désé hunting jacket Nagé Kéo people, Ndora, Flores, Indonesia vegetable fibre, pigments twining, painting Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam 2104-3
According to Nagé Kéo informants, twined and painted fibre hunting jackets (désé) from central Flores, were only made in the Ndora and Rawa districts, though in the past these skills may have also been evident in other parts of the domain (van Suchtelen, 1921: Fig.116). The patterns on this early twentieth-century example are painted in dark and ochre-browns and black.
warrior's jacket Ifugao people, Luzon, Philippines bangi (Caryota cuminggi) and other fibre twining, knotting 85.0 x 72.0 cm Australian National Gallery 1984.1234
bango back-pack Ifugao people, Luzon, Philippines bangi (Caryota cuminggi), rattan, wood interlacing, knotting Australian National Gallery 1988.522 Gift of Jonathan Thwaites, 1988
This bango back-pack, a basket with shoulder straps, is constructed of interlaced split rattan attached to a wooden base. It has the same tufted black hairy surface as the jacket in Plate 59, an item of apparel that provided protection from the torrential tropical rains. The base fabric of the jacket, however, is not plaited matting but a strong, pliable, twined and knotted fibre mesh. Among the Ifugao the bango is still associated with hunting and ceremonial activities believed to expiate disasters such as bad deaths or illness. Both objects probably date from the early twentieth century.
A photograph taken in the mid-1930s in Laos of a woman, possibly from the Kassang community, who is using a foot-braced loom similar to those depicted on Bronze Age metal sculptures found in Southeast Asia. Such looms have also been used by certain minority peoples in Cambodia and Vietnam (Boulbet, 1964).
A Lamaholot woman weaving a met, a supplementary warp weave belt, on a backstrap tension loom in the IIi Mandiri region of east Flores. A recently recorded bronze maternity figure located in a nearby district of east Flores (Adams, 1977) displays a foot-braced loom being used to weave a band with a pattern similar to those found on these met belts.
A Lamaholot elder wearing a wide ceremonial sash (met) in east Flores, Indonesia. The textile, in handspun cotton and natural dyes, is woven in a supplementary warp weave, reserved for belts and sashes in the Lamaholot region, but used as a major decorative device in other parts of the region, including east Alor and some Atoni domains in Timor.
It is difficult to know what raw materials were used in the earliest weaving processes. Clay whorls for drop-weighted spindles have been found in many mainland archaeological sites and this suggests that cotton was already in use in prehistoric times (Bellwood, 1980: 63). The absence of similar finds of prehistoric spindle whorls in insular Southeast Asia has been used to support the argument that weaving arrived late to the island world of the region.22 However, this may also be explained by the use of wooden spindle-weights which are still widely used throughout eastern Indonesia today and by the fact that spindles are not required at all in the preparation of most bast and leaf fibres suitable for weaving.
Many varieties of wild fibres suitable for weaving thread can be found throughout the region. Their use, without spindles, but knotted or rolled on the leg, still continues today, although this has been greatly diminished by the availability and attractiveness of cotton.
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Hemp, taken from under the bark of certain cannabis plants, is preferred by the Hmong of northern Thailand for making their pleated batik skirts, although cotton thread is also used.23 Another popular bast fibre is abaca. Best known in its commercial form as Manila hemp and exported from Luzon in colonial times,24 it is taken from the inner section of the wild banana plant (Musa textilis), dried and separated into strands and then joined into the long threads needed for weaving. On Mindanao, this fibre is used as both thread and binding material for ikat, the decorative technique whereby threads are resist-tied and dyed into patterns before weaving.